Two dolts...

recently tried to claim here that to admit that a being infinitely greater than oneself created the universe is an act of... hubris!... just the same as devotees of scientism claiming science is to get credit for the wonders of creation. (And of course, no devotee of scientism is actually going to outright claim that science created galaxies or deep sea fish or volcanoes. The way this sort of propaganda works is that they will continuously suggest that, but when challenged, will offer a shocked denial that they ever suggested any such thing. Just like my own dolts did.)

"Then there is the element of pride. You have to be smart to do natural science. Combox trolls usually are not very smart, but they think of themselves as smart, because they at least have the capacity to pepper their remarks with words like 'physics,' 'science,' 'reason,' etc. as well as to rehearse whatever science trivia they picked up from Wikipedia. So, suppose you are either a scientist or a combox troll who has gotten your head full of scientism. You are convinced that philosophers and other non-scientists have nothing of interest to say. Then one of them points out that you are committing a fallacy so simple that a child can see it. That can be very hard to swallow. And if the person pointing out the self-defeating character of scientism happens to be religious, the blow to one’s pride can be absolutely excruciating. 'Some religious nut is going to catch me out on a blatant fallacy? No way in hell! I refuse to believe it!' One’s pride in one's presumed superior rationality locks one into a deeply irrational frame of mind."

And the last point is what makes discussion with such people (at least on topics related to the religion of scientism) absolutely impossible.

Comments

'Two dolts recently tried to claim here that to admit that a being infinitely greater than oneself created the universe is an act of... hubris!'

Um, I don't think that is what was being said: I think it was rather that there is no qualitative difference in the hubris stakes between a claim by theists that god created all the wonders of the natural world and an alleged claim made by devotees of scientism that science created them.

Right, rob, and that claim is idiotic: to be *humble* in the face of an immensely greater being than ourselves who generated all we see around us, and to try to claim that creation for ourselves, although we can't even generate a sunny day, are entirely different things, and only dolts (in the throes of scientism) could fail to see the difference between the two claims!

Gene, Lord meant the hubris of certainty, of confidence in one's own knowledge. To think that us puny humans have come to understand the what the answer is to the question of what caused all the mysterious and wondrous phenomena around us.

But to acknowledge the obvious, that a being much greater than ourselves created the "mysterious and wondrous phenomena around us", is not to commit the hubris of "certainty" at all! It is just to admit the obvious, and to be humble in the face of that obviousness!

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